Skeeter Skelton
Charles
A. “Skeeter” Skelton was born May 1, 1928, in Hereford, Deaf Smith County,
Texas, the heart of the High Plains and the old Comanche and buffalo country.
The son of a merchant, rancher, farmer, and hunter, he developed an early
interest in firearms, especially handguns, doing his first pistol shooting with
his father’s Colt Woodsman .22 when he was five.
Skeeter
began acquiring and studying handguns during his adolescence, and developed a
strong attachment to large-caliber single-action revolvers. Perhaps partly owing
to his interest in the use of firearms, he spent only a brief time in college
after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and elected to follow law enforcement as
a career. He served as a city patrolman in Amarillo, Texas, as a U.S. Border
Patrolman on the last patrol in Arizona maintained by that agency, as deputy
sheriff and then sheriff of his home Deaf Smith County, as a narcotics agent for
U.S. Customs, and finally as Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, from which position he retired in 1974. After his
retirement, his interest in the firearms field remained lively, and he acted as
a consultant to various firearms manufacturers and occasionally demonstrated
their products.
In
1966, Skeeter started writing for Shooting Times and was the magazine’s
Handgun Editor for 21 years. His first piece was a “Handguns” column which
appeared in the July 1966 issue. He authored more than 400 articles for Shooting
Times and had two books, Skeeter Skelton On Handguns and Skeeter
Skelton’s Handgun Tales, to his credit.
In
1978, he was named the sixth recipient of the Outstanding American Handgunner
Award.
Blessed
with a loyal following of readers, Skeeter promised to keep writing gun-related
material “until my typewriter freezes over,” and as always, he kept his
word. He passed away on Sunday, January 17, 1988, at Sun Towers Hospital in El
Paso, Texas.
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